We sat about in the kitchen all the morning,
with men coming in every few minutes to give their opinion whether
the passage should be attempted, and at what points the sea was
likely to be at its worst.
At last it was decided we should go, and I started for the pier in a
wild shower of rain with the wind howling in the walls. The
schoolmaster and a priest who was to have gone with me came out as I
was passing through the village and advised me not to make the
passage; but my crew had gone on towards the sea, and I thought it
better to go after them. The eldest son of the family was coming
with me, and I considered that the old man, who knew the waves
better than I did, would not send out his son if there was more than
reasonable danger.
I found my crew waiting for me under a high wall below the village,
and we went on together. The island had never seemed so desolate.
Looking out over the black limestone through the driving rain to the
gulf of struggling waves, an indescribable feeling of dejection came
over me.
The old man gave me his view of the use of fear.
'A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,' he said,
'for he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid
of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.'
A little crowd of neighbours had collected lower down to see me off,
and as we crossed the sandhills we had to shout to each other to be
heard above the wind.
The crew carried down the curagh and then stood under the lee of the
pier tying on their hats with strings and drawing on their oilskins.
They tested the braces of the oars, and the oarpins, and everything
in the curagh with a care I had not seen them give to anything, then
my bag was lifted in, and we were ready. Besides the four men of the
crew a man was going with us who wanted a passage to this island. As
he was scrambling into the bow, an old man stood forward from the
crowd.
'Don't take that man with you,' he said. 'Last week they were taking
him to Clare and the whole lot of them were near drownded. Another
day he went to Inisheer and they broke three ribs of the curagh, and
they coming back. There is not the like of him for ill-luck in the
three islands.'
'The divil choke your old gob,' said the man, 'you will be talking.'
We set off. It was a four-oared curagh, and I was given the last
seat so as to leave the stern for the man who was steering with an
oar, worked at right angles to the others by an extra thole-pin in
the stern gunnel.
When we had gone about a hundred yards they ran up a bit of a sail
in the bow and the pace became extraordinarily rapid.
The shower had passed over and the wind had fallen, but large,
magnificently brilliant waves were rolling down on us at right
angles to our course.
Every instant the steersman whirled us round with a sudden stroke of
his oar, the prow reared up and then fell into the next furrow with
a crash, throwing up masses of spray. As it did so, the stern in its
turn was thrown up, and both the steersman, who let go his oar and
clung with both hands to the gunnel, and myself, were lifted high up
above the sea.
The wave passed, we regained our course and rowed violently for a
few yards, then the same manoeuvre had to be repeated. As we worked
out into the sound we began to meet another class of waves, that
could be seen for some distance towering above the rest.
When one of these came in sight, the first effort was to get beyond
its reach. The steersman began crying out in Gaelic, 'Siubhal,
siubhal' ('Run, run'), and sometimes, when the mass was gliding
towards us with horrible speed, his voice rose to a shriek. Then the
rowers themselves took up the cry, and the curagh seemed to leap and
quiver with the frantic terror of a beast till the wave passed
behind it or fell with a crash beside the stern.
It was in this racing with the waves that our chief danger lay. If
the wave could be avoided, it was better to do so, but if it
overtook us while we were trying to escape, and caught us on the
broadside, our destruction was certain. I could see the steersman
quivering with the excitement of his task, for any error in his
judgment would have swamped us.
We had one narrow escape. A wave appeared high above the rest, and
there was the usual moment of intense exertion. It was of no use,
and in an instant the wave seemed to be hurling itself upon us. With
a yell of rage the steersman struggled with his oar to bring our
prow to meet it. He had almost succeeded, when there was a crash and
rush of water round us. I felt as if I had been struck upon the back
with knotted ropes. White foam gurgled round my knees and eyes. The
curagh reared up, swaying and trembling for a moment, and then fell
safely into the furrow.
